Being able to adapt to the challenges life throws at us are an essential part of the fulltime RVer’s psychological toolbox. They say that the only thing that stays the same is change, and that’s certainly true whether you live in a sticks and bricks house, or a home on wheels.

No matter how carefully you plan, there will be times when all of your plans go right out the window and you just have to adapt to the new situation and deal with it. If you can’t, you’re probably never going to make it as a fulltimer, because this lifestyle, as great as it is, holds a lot of surprises.

You may plan to be at a certain campground at a certain time, and bad weather, traffic delays, or a mechanical breakdown keeps you from getting there, and instead you find yourself spending the night next to a hog hauler in a truck stop parking lot. You may have registered for your favorite RV rally, expecting lots of fellowship and good times, only to arrive to find the grounds have turned into a sea of mud. You may want to see Alaska, or drive old Route 66 next summer, but an unplanned medical emergency finds you stuck in Paducah.

You can’t foresee everything that will happen to you, but you can be very sure that from time to time, something will happen to get in the way of your plans! Being able to just accept it and roll with the flow will help keep you sane, and make your RVing life much more enjoyable.

When we originally came up here to Elkhart, it was going to be a quick trip in and out – get the bus sold, get a couple of minor issues handled on the RV, make a quick stop at the VA hospital in Lexington, and head back to the warm, sunny South. As you know, those plans disappeared Friday night.

I was able to get my medical appointment rescheduled for Friday, and the folks here at Duncan RV Repair have been scrambling to get us ready to go, and have just about everything finished. But now we have this terrible winter storm tearing the country apart and making traveling unsafe.

We’ve been through more than enough the last few days to need any more challenges, so if the wind keeps blowing, and the roads stay slippery and treacherous, I’ll just call the VA hospital and either reschedule or cancel the appointment, and we’ll sit tight until it’s safe to be out on the road.

Yes, we’d love to put cold, snowy Elkhart in our rearview mirror, and we’re really looking forward to doing so as soon as we can. But being stuck here is a minor inconvenience. Wrecking our RV and injuring ourselves on a patch of icy road would be a tragedy. So we’re sitting tight, watching the weather reports, keeping our fingers crossed, and rolling with the flow. Like I said, sometimes you just have to adapt.

Thought For The Day – Better to do it than to wish it done.

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Of all of the places I don’t want to be, anywhere it is cold and snowing is at the very top of my list. Stuck in a traffic jam? Mere child’s play. Sitting in a dentist’s chair getting a root canal? I can handle it. Dinner with my ex-mother-in-law? Bring it on and give me a heaping helping of seconds.

But snow and cold just do not fit into my life plan. And we are getting it here in Elkhart, Indiana! I don’t want to be an Eskimo! I belong on a beach somewhere, soaking up sunshine, listening to Jimmy Buffett, and watching the pretty girls strolling by in their skimpy bikinis. This is just wrong!

In spite of the hassle and discomfort caused by our break in, I just cannot say enough good about the folks here at Duncan RV Repair. Owners Jim and Kristy Deavers, and their entire staff, have treated us just like family. When we came in Monday morning each and every employee stopped to shake our hands, even hug us, and tell us how sorry they were for what happened, and how glad they were that we were not injured in the confrontation with the burglar.

Jim Deavers told me that he was making getting us back on the road his top priority, and their crew swarmed over our motorhome, fixing the bent door where I slammed it on the bad guy’s hand, replacing the screen on the door, measuring the door window to get replacement glass ordered, and a dozen other tasks. They replaced both of our DVD players, my netbook computer, our TV, and even ordered a replacement for my Silverleaf engine monitoring cable.

Jim even had a lady come in to clean the inside of the motorhome, wiping down any surface the burglar might have touched, vacuuming the carpet, and making our home feel “clean” again! I’m sure my lady blog readers know how much that meant to Miss Terry.

Everybody here has gone far above and beyond what was required or expected, and we appreciate it more than we can ever say. They have made a terrible time in our lives a lot easier to deal with. We don’t feel like customers experiencing some misfortune, but rather family members with a problem that the whole clan has come together to help and support.

Somebody sent me an e-mail saying that they would never come to any place to get service or repairs done where something like this could have happened. That’s nonsense. This could have happened anywhere in the country. Crime is not isolated to the big cities or the bad neighborhoods anymore. It’s everywhere.

The once charming, peaceful small Arizona mountain town where we lived for so many years before hitting the road, is now overrun with meth dealers and crime. My daughter lives within sight of the police department, and a couple of years ago one of her neighbors was busted for making meth in his apartment! She worked at a Sears store, and came out to find her brand new car stolen, and when it was later recovered, it had been vandalized. When I owned the newspaper there, we seldom had reports of robberies and burglaries. Now two of my good friends have had their businesses broken into, and the bank was just robbed this past Friday!

It is not the fault of Duncan RV that some scumbag picked our motorhome to break into while it was parked on their lot. It would have been easy for them to tell us “There’s the telephone, call your insurance company, and when they give us the okay, we’ll make an appointment to start in on your repairs.” I have met more than a few shop owners who would have done just that. But Jim and Kristy Deavers are honest, decent, hard working, wonderful people who feel a sense of responsibility to their customers, and they want to make things right. We feel very fortunate that if this had to happen to us, at least it happened here, with people who care.  We would come back here for service anytime.

Thought For The Day – An ounce of discretion is worth a pound of wit.

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We hit the ground running yesterday! The techs at Duncan RV Repair were supposed to start working on our motorhome at 9 a.m., so Miss Terry had the alarm clock set for 7:30 so we’d have time to get our morning routine done and have the Winnebago unplugged from shore power, the slides in, and the jacks up when they came for it.

Terry was up before me, and when I rolled out of bed, I glanced at my cell phone and it said the time was 8:41 a.m. I asked Terry why she had let me sleep so late, and then we realized that while we had adjusted the clocks on our microwave, computers, and in the van back to Eastern Time, we had forgotten the alarm clock!

What followed was a mad rush to brush teeth, get dressed, store things away inside the motorhome, run outside to unplug the electrical cord, and get the slides in and the jacks up, but we were done at exactly 9 a.m. Whew! What a way to start the day! But we were right on schedule.

Of course, then we waited. And waited. Finally about 9:30 I went inside and was told that the employees were in a meeting and should be done soon. A tech broke free and came out to get our keys, and when we left a little before 10, they still had not moved the RV inside. Hurry up and wait, just like in the Army. Oh well, at least I got an extra hour or so of sleep!

We drove over to Phoenix Commercial Paint and spent the day piddling around the bus, charging the batteries to compensate for the time the bus has been sitting unused, and then starting it up to warm up the engine.

We took a break about 1 p.m. for lunch with our friend Michele Henry, owner of Phoenix Commercial Paint, and when we came out of the restaurant it was snowing! Being anywhere it is snowing goes completely against the very carefully laid out plan I have for my life. I was supposed to be on a houseboat in Key West right now!

Back at Duncan RV Repair, late in the day, they did not have everything finished on the motorhome, which I had expected, since we needed several things done.  That was one reason we got to town early, so they could have two days to work on it, if needed. They had repaired the water heater, so that it now works on both gas and electric, and had completed the engine oil change, lube job, and fuel filter replacement.

They were closing for the day, so our service tech moved the motorhome back out to their campground, and today it will go back into the shop to have the Wilson Trucker antenna installed and the Onan generator serviced.

Today is going to be another busy day for us. We have to pick up a new order of our Just A Gypsy T-shirts from our screen printer here in Elkhart, and then touch base with Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. We had arranged for our mail forwarding service to send our mail to us, care of the museum. Then we have to unload our bicycles and kayaks from the van to have room for passengers, and at 4:46 p.m. we have to be at the airport in South Bend, Indiana to met Rich Perry, who is flying in from California with a friend to pick up the bus.

We’re going to be sorry to see that old gal go, she sure has been good to us!    

Thought For The Day – Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection all over again.

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After our marathon drive to Elkhart, we slept soundly in spite of the fact that Duncan RV Repair is located just a block or so from a major railroad switching yard, and day and night you can hear the screeching of steel wheels on steel rails, and the banging and clanking of railroad cars being shuffled around.

While Miss Terry was having her morning coffee and checking e-mail, I went to the office and checked in, letting them know which site we were in, though that probably wasn’t necessary, since the only RVs in Duncan’s camping area are our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage and an Alpha motorhome.

We went over the things I needed done that I had listed when I made our appointment (fix water heater, which works on gas but not electric, and install our Wilson Trucker antenna on the roof of the motorhome for better reception with our Verizon air card), and then, when I discovered that Duncan is an authorized Onan service and repair facility, I added a couple of other tasks (oil and filter change, lube job, and new fuel filter on the motorhome, and service our Onan diesel generator). As long as we’re here, we’ll get everything done we can.

Later on, a service tech named Marco came out to the motorhome to go over our job list again, and since it was noon by then and he would not be able to start on our rig until about 2 p.m., he suggested that we wait until today, and he’d pull it in first thing and have the whole day to get things done, rather than start, then have to button everything back up at closing time and move the motorhome out so we could sleep in it overnight, and then do the same thing this morning all over again. We agreed, and promised we’d have the motorhome ready to go at 9 a.m. today.

With that all arranged, we drove to Phoenix Commercial Paint, where we have had our bus stored since we left the area. Owner Michele Henry greeted us, and we checked out the full body paint job she was finishing up on a Fleetwood diesel pusher. That lady does great work and is a stickler for getting every detail perfect!

We checked the bus out to be sure it was ready for its new owner on Friday, then made a quick stop at RV Surplus to say hello to our friend Trina Ambris. By then it was late in the afternoon and we were ready for dinner.

The storm that has been moving across the country began with sprinkles as we were driving back to our motorhome, and we wondered how bad it was going to get. We have snow showers predicted for the next several days, and temperatures in the 20s. Not exactly perfect RVing weather. We look forward to getting back to the South to soak up some sunshine.

Bad Nick is no fool, he spent the day inside writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled How Do You Put A Deadline On A War?. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – Bad decisions make good stories.

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The title of today’s blog pretty much sums up how I have felt for the last two days. All the while we were driving north toward Indiana, we were passing RVs going in the other direction. In the past, when we have been the southbound RV and we have spotted rigs going north late in the year, I always told Miss Terry “That dummy’s got it all wrong. He should be headed south like us.” Well, this year I am that dummy!

After spending the night at the Tennessean Truck Stop, we woke up early yesterday morning and were back on Interstate 65 a little after 8 a.m. I never like driving through Nashville, and this trip was no exception. The traffic was terrible, and on the north side of town we saw a UPS tractor trailer rig towing tandem that had rolled onto the drivers’ side. I sure hope nobody got hurt in the accident.

As we passed Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we taught for Life on Wheels so many times at Western Kentucky University, we reminisced about all of the good times we had there. The schedule was a real grind, but we miss all of our other instructor friends, and interacting with the students.

About 50 miles north of Bowling Green we hit a rough spot in the road, and suddenly a loud beeping noise startled us. Terry grabbed the PressurePro tire monitor control, sure we had blown a tire. But she quickly realized what we were hearing was our “Jacks Down” alert, and the red light was flashing on the dashboard. I pulled off the road and into a truck stop and turned on the HWH system. It showed our left rear jack was down. I checked to be sure that all of our automatic leveling jacks were in the travel position, then hit the Store button and the alarm went off. I guess when we hit the rough pavement, it jolted the system enough to give a false signal.

Back on the road, we continued north through Louisville, where traffic wasn’t as bad as I expected, then crossed the Ohio River into Indiana. We stopped for fuel at the Flying J in Whiteland, a few miles south of Indianapolis, and I was disappointed that the sign on the highway said diesel was $2.69 a gallon, but a sign at the pump said it was $2.83. What’s that about?

We circled Indianapolis on the Interstate 465 bypass, and got on U.S. Highway 31 northbound. We have driven this route so many times that I could do it blindfolded.

Blindfolded maybe, but not in the dark. My night vision sucks, so about 100 miles out of Elkhart, the sun was getting low in the sky, and Miss Terry took the wheel and drove the rest of the way. She test drove our Winnebago before we bought it, but this was her first time to drive it on the highway, and she did just fine, as I knew she would. I have been putting off letting her drive, because I was afraid that once she got a feel for the big Cummins diesel engine, she might never let me behind the wheel again! And I think I was right!

We are big believers in both people in an RV knowing how to drive it. While I do the great majority of the driving in our coach, it is an extra measure of safety knowing that Terry can take the wheel whenever necessary if I get sick, tired, run out of daylight, or just need a break.

We arrived at Duncan RV Repair in Elkhart about 6:30 p.m. local time, with just over 500 miles behind us this driving day, and 900 miles total in two days. That’s a lot of driving!

Duncan RV has several 30 amp RV hookups available, and can do any type of RV service or repair, from simple tune-ups to body work and refurbishing. Our regular hangout here, Elkhart Campground, is closed for the season, so we’ll be staying here while we wrap up our business with the bus buyer. We also have an appointment to have Duncan do some work on our motorhome while we’re here, killing two birds with one stone. Or at least in one trip.              

Thought For The Day – Was learning cursive really necessary?

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